Prevention Versus a Cure

Imagine if you can, two men, sitting on either side of me. One man is writhing in pain. Foaming at the mouth. He has only a few days to live before he dies in agony.

In the other chair, a man sits, composed and currently healthy. He represents the people who may one day develop this disease.

You can choose to cure the sick man, ending his pain and suffering and ensuring a healthy life from then on. Or, on the other hand, you can choose to vaccinate the healthy man, successfully preventing him and those he represents from ever possibly contracting the horrible illness.

Who would you choose? The sick person who will die in agony without your immediate intervention? Or the healthy man who may die without the preventative?

This conundrum pits intelligence against compassion and human nature and that is the ethical debate behind prevention vs. a cure.

Logically you would choose vaccinate the people who might contract the disease, it’s more effective, both economically and in terms of the pain suffered and the lives saved. However compassion, by its very nature, is not logical and as a human, you want to cure the poor man writhing in agony. Are you going to turn your back on the sick and infirm? It’s hard to imagine the perfectly healthy man on my left in the same condition as this pain-ridden individual, in the grasp of the disease at this very moment.

Compassion in not the only guiding force behind the choice you face. Maybe you are thinking I would save the sick man because I would want to be saved if I was sick and he was healthy. Human nature, empathy and selfishness all point us towards the cure option and away from prevention. Because, lets face it, prevention is boring. It requires changes in lifestyle and behavior. It requires foresight and planning.

We want to be able to do what we like and have any unwanted consequences annulled by a “cure”. We want to base-jump and have an ambulance waiting at the bottom to rush us to hospital, we want doctor’s ready and waiting, to fix our broken bones and transplant our damaged organs... Our desire for a miraculous “cure” isn’t even limited to medical situations, this want extends to every part of our lives.

We want to be able to leave the taps running in the bathroom so no-one hears us pee, and then we demand a cure for the lack of water, a desalination plant that costs enormous amounts of money and guzzles electricity. Our scientists discover that, because of human-produced pollution, the earth’s climate is changing. Rather than taking immediate steps to reduce our use of resources and production of greenhouse gases, thereby preventing further damage to our climate and environment, we procrastinate and deny and wait for some quick-fix cure to appear.

Ladies and gentlemen the uncomfortable truth (dare I say the inconvenient truth) is that; despite condoms being a readily available and practically free preventative, another person in America alone contracts HIV/AIDS every 20 minutes. That’s over 40000 a year in just the USA. A prophylactic merely a quarter of a millimeter thick and every 20 minutes another American gets HIV, a ¼ million more pleasure and a lifetime of Aids.

We, as human beings of 2007, understand intelligently that prevention is better than a cure. It’s cheaper, more effective in the long run, and the damage never gets done. By preventing a disease, or indeed any other unwanted occurrence, we remove the chance of harm ever being affected, including the side effects of the cure itself. But human beings don’t always think intelligently, sometimes compassion and human nature gets in the way, and that’s when we want the cure.

An alcoholic rarely thinks about there liver until its time for a new one. We are taught from an early age not to leave the taps running and from a not-so-early age to use a condom, but in the end, human nature sends us chasing after the quick-fix cure.

But despite all that I’ve said today, and prevention being far better that a cure aside, I would save the sick man. My compassion and human nature have won over and instead of doing the intelligent thing, preventing the disease; I would choose to cure the man of his pain and suffering.

What would you choose?